Some (including most die-hard Cronenberg fans) qualify Crash as not just the Canadian provocateur’s most daring work (and that’s saying something given his filmography) but also possibly his best, while others tend to be repulsed by its graphic displays of sex and violence and its morbid theme. This dark, intensely disturbing and exceedingly controversial movie, adapted from J.G. Ballard’s novel, deals with an underground sub-culture comprising of people who have taken auto-enthusiasm to fetishistic levels. The same transformation is experienced by James Ballard (James Spader), an affluent commercial director with a promiscuous icy-cold blonde (Deborah Kara Unger) as his wife, who, post a brutal car crash, gets drawn into this sleazy and grotesque world of depravity and erotic obsessions by Vaughn (Elias Koteas), a self-professed prophet who loves replicating celebrity car-crashes, and a pair of emotionally damaged auto-accident survivors played by Holly Hunter and Rosanna Arquette. The performances are notable for the kind of emotional detachedness and utter alienation from what counts as conventional behaviour that have been portrayed with chilling effects by the cast. The movie’s coldness, nihilism, bleak tone and extreme nature, have made it absolutely antithetical to what constitutes as heartwarming. Yet, if one manages to get past one’s squeamishness, one would find this an audacious reflection on the rampage of technology in our lives.
Director: David Cronenberg
Genre: Drama/Psychological Thriller/Urban Drama
Language: English
Country: Canada
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